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Jacques Prévert and Pablo Picasso, at La Colombe d'or, the famous inn in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Prévert is one of those men who give France this very special character. A free thinker who shares his talent with other artists.
We do not always realize his immense contribution to what is called the French spirit. If we were to remove the nuggets he gave us, our culture would be terribly impoverished. In particular the cinema, he who wrote the screenplay and dialogues of the masterpiece "Les enfants du Paradis" or "Quai des Brumes" which made Jean Gabin say "you have beautiful eyes you know" and respond to Michèle Morgan “Embrassez-moi”, who chiseled the song from the film “The Doors of the Night” where Montand sings “Les Feuilles Mortes”.
For me there remains the one that, when I was little, I called the Ogre, because he enjoyed sticking his cigarette on his tongue, pretending to swallow it and then bringing it out in curls of smoke and grumbling, "I am Ogrrrre I'm going to eat you."

Ah there Yves Montand!
Here he is in full demonstration, at my godfather's house, at the Colombe d'or, in front of the Braque mosaic.
He taught me how to play poker and how to dive. As a result, today, I play poker better than I dive! For his friends he was "Montand", I never heard him called "Yves".
Some memories from La Saga Maeght: Sometimes we go down to Cagnes and Villeneuve-Loubet by bike then, a little older, on mopeds, to buy records or to take one of our dogs to the vet. Other times, Montand takes us to the Eden Roc where he meets to play cards in one of the hotel's rooms. In the taxi speeding down the narrow, winding roads that go down to Antibes, he tells me that he learned to play poker the hard way, with the guys from the Rat Pack, when he was in America filming The Billionaire with Marilyn Monroe. Sinatra and his friends trashed it, it lost all of its cachet, enormous for the time, but it was worth it, if only for a look from Shirley MacLaine, the most intelligent, likes- he repeats. “Now,” he told me, “I know how to play, it cost me quite a lot.” » For us, he imitates American gangsters, sings out of tune to tease us, teaches us songs, acts like an idiot, but above all makes us laugh, laugh until we cry.

Jimmy Baldwin also chose Saint Paul de Vence to live and work. His bursts of laughter still resonate in my mind.
James Baldwin, born in 1924 in a segregationist America, a gifted child, he chose, among all his talents, to devote himself to writing.
Very quickly, his writings addressed homosexuality, bisexuality but also identity and racism. A great teacher, he debates tirelessly on television sets to explain to white people the consequences of racism. On July 2, 1964, thanks to the work of civil rights activists, American President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, a law prohibiting racial discrimination and segregation.
A few days later, on July 28, 1964, Jimmy was present at the inauguration of the Maeght Foundation, honored by my grandfather, in the same way as the great artists of the 20th century.